Synopsis

This collection attempts to incorporate cultural studies into the understanding of schooling, not simply addressing how students read themselves as "members" of a distinct culture, but how they, along with teachers and administrators, read popular texts in general. The purpose of this book is to suggest some alternative directions critical pedagogy can take in its critique of popular culture by inviting multiple reading of popular texts into its analysis of schooling and seeing many forms of popular culture as critical pedagogical texts.

Excerpt

John A. Weaver and Toby Daspit

As treasured and guarded academic boundaries implode from the power of a postmodern shift towards interdisciplinarity and assumptions of what is real blur from a bombardment of images, Henry Giroux (1994) ponders why few have incorporated cultural studies into their critical analysis of education (p. 278). in his recent reflections on the role of cultural studies in critical pedagogy and education, Giroux (1996a) suggests that while a film such as Kids by Larry Clark romanticizes youth violence, sexuality, and drug use, there are examples such as Harlem Diary in which youth are able to represent themselves on video and provide insights into the ways they read themselves and the world around them. the authors of this edited work attempt to incorporate cultural studies into our understanding of schooling not only to address how students read themselves but how they, along with teachers and administrators, read popular culture texts in general. in fact, the purpose of this book is to suggest some alternative directions critical pedagogy can take in its critique of popular culture and education. Specifically, there are two issues the essays in this book will attempt to address in multiple ways: decentering critical pedagogy by inviting multiple readings of popular culture texts into our analyses of schooling and seeing many forms of popular culture as critical pedagogical texts. in the remainder of this introduction, we will discuss why critical theorists should begin to seek alternative directions in relationship to popular culture, and, in a cursory way, we will touch upon the ways in which